


love must be as much a light, as it is a flame

by youheldyourbreath



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: After infinity war, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 19:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11630751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youheldyourbreath/pseuds/youheldyourbreath
Summary: The sun rises after Thanos is defeated. The light is pink and purifying. But it doesn't change what happened, it doesn't even heal. It promises new beginnings...to everyone but Peter. He can't quite move on, so some lights on the football field, florescent and tinny, will have to do.





	love must be as much a light, as it is a flame

Light peaked through the rubble as the sun rose over the tattered remains of downtown Manhattan. In spite of all the chaos, destruction and death the sunshine seemed to wash away all of Thanos' hatred. There would be time later to mourn and rebuild but now, as the light was pink and soft and purifying, Peter Parker was glad to be alive. His tattered mask, which was now mostly a strip of ripped cloth across the left side of his face, was dirt-covered and ruined but he kept it on for the small bit it did to conceal his identity. Tony, he nearly cried at the thought of his mentor, Tony would have wanted him to keep things to his chest. 

 

He collapsed on a piece of concrete blown off of a nearby skyscraper. Peter blinked back the sunshine and tipped his head up to the sky. In and out he breathed, it was a new day and maybe, now with Thanos dead, it could be a better one. 

 

Peter heard the crackle of concrete as someone sat beside him. He took in one more shallow breath and opened his eyes. There, war-stricken but alive, was War Machine. Rhodey. 

 

"Where is he?" Peter whispered. 

 

Agent Rhodes took a deep, belabored breath, "They're taking him and Steve upstate. Bucky figures Steve will want to be buried in Brookyln. As for Tony, Pepper gets the final say in all that."

 

Peter nodded, willing his eyes not to water. He was there, after all, he was why it all happened. Not Steve. He hadn't even known Steve had died until the dust had settled and Sam and Bucky were rushing over to Steve, to help him, to do something to wake the dead. But he had seen when Tony died. 

 

Thanos had spotted Peter at the end, when they were all working together to bring him down, and he aimed his gauntlet at Peter. He remembered thinking that Aunt May would be all alone now as the gauntlet lit up, preparing to blast in his direction. And he did see the flash of light whipping in his direction. He had closed his eyes for impact but nothing came. 

 

He opened his eyes, expecting the next life or whatever else happened after being annihilated by an infinity stone, but instead it was Tony. A lazer shaped hole in his chest. He hadn't yelled out in pain or cried, he simply looked over his shoulder at Peter and smirked, "I want you to be better."

 

For as long as Peter lived, he would never forget when Tony fell. His knees collapsing out from underneath him and his face crashing into the dirt. Peter had scrambled to his mentor as the world pulsed into white noise. 

 

The rest of the fight, the downfall of Thanos, had been a desperate, angry blur of battle. It was only when the pink light of the new day peaked over Manhattan did Peter truly realize it was over. 

 

Peter wiped at his nose with his forearm, lazy and boyish, "It's all my fault." He nodded, never more sure of anything in his life, "It's all my fault."

 

Rhodes took Peter under his arm and rocked him back and forth, the way Aunt May had when he was just a boy and the way she had again when the police came by their house to tell them about Uncle Ben. He fought back the tears as Rhodes spoke, "You didn't do anything wrong, Peter. Thanos did that. Not you."

 

"But I-"

 

"No," Rhodes' voice was strong, "Tony made his choice. And he saved you because he believed in you. Don't let his belief weigh you down, let it raise you up. Be better than us. We've got a second shot now. The world has a second shot."

 

"PETER!" A shrill, female voice cried out across the battleground. 

 

Both Peter and Rhodes looked across the street and Peter stood tall, "Aunt May? AUNT MAY!"

 

Without a second thought for War Machine, he ran across the rubble to his aunt and launched himself in her arms. She cradled his head against her chest and whispered prayers to whatever god had favored him in this battle. Thanking every single one. 

 

"Aunt May," he cried in her shirt.

 

"Hush now, sweetheart," she slicked back the hair that was poking out of his mask, "You're safe now. Mom's here."

 

\--

 

The news the following weeks after the battle of Thanos, all 47 days of it, seemed to be a never ending broadcast of the dead. Thanos' tyranny had killed 5,628 New Yorkers and 5 Avengers. All of their names weighed Peter down but he tried to remember Rhodes' words about letting it raise him up, doing better, but at seventeen he could only face so much tragedy before he buckled beneath it. 

 

And some days were better than others.

 

The worst days, after, were the Avengers' funerals. Vision, Hawkeye, Nebula, Steve Rodgers and Tony Stark. 

 

Peter attended every one. 

 

And they didn't help the healing, the just tore open his chest and left a gaping, sensitive wound. 

 

A month and a day after Thanos' defeat, school reopened and the students, the ones that didn't move out of state after the destruction of school, wandered the halls just as haunted and lonely as Peter. 

 

Ned couldn't even bring himself to find some joy, to spread it out to their decathlon team members. 

 

But Peter knew that even in his state's grief, in his school's grief, he stood apart. There was something more wartorn in him than everyone else and that was because he had been there, he had seen it, he had felt it and he had been one of the players that had the power to save lives and he had failed. Not everyone, but 5,628 more people died than they were supposed to. 

 

Nearly two months after the Avenger's Victory as some people started to call it, MJ sat beside Peter on the bleachers after school. There was an easy silence between them and she did not leave. She did not leave when the school day ended, or when the sun set, or when the football field's lights flickered on for the night. 

 

In that artificial light, she reached for his hand and entwined their fingers. Peter looked at her for the first time since she sat down in surprise. 

 

"Thank you," she managed, after another minute of silence where the only thing between them was eye contact and breath. 

 

"Thank you?" he questioned. 

 

MJ nodded, "My little brother, Derek. He was in Manhattan that day, on a train to get out of the city to find refuge at my aunt and uncles' in Jersey. Train felt safer than taking a car. And Thanos threw it off the tracks." 

 

Peter remembered, he had seen it, and he knew what happened next, "MJ please-"

 

She spoke over him, "And you caught it with your bare hands. Stopped the train from crashing and burning. Saved his life." Her voice hitched, "I never thanked you."

 

He shook his head, "I don't know what you're talking about."

 

"Peter," she rolled her eyes, "I know."

 

Silence took over them once more, his eyes flicked down to their entwined hands. 

 

Another fifteen minutes went by before Michelle tried to start the conversation again, "I'm sorry about Tony Stark. I know he meant a lot to you." Peter dropped her hand, but Michelle moved down to the row of bleachers in front of him. She looked right up at him, he was hovering just above her face as he tried to look at the ground. "You're not an island, Peter. It's okay to be upset."

 

His eyes caught hers, "I'm afraid to do this without him."

 

"You're not doing it alone. You've got all those other superhero people in metal and spandex to help," she tried with the slightest smile.

 

Peter didn't return it, "We're barely a team now."

 

She reached up to touch his face and hesitated, her hands hovering where she wanted to touch him, her eyes begging for permission. Peter felt his chest constrict but he covered her hands with him and guided them the rest of the way to his face. They were imperceptibly close now, on the edge of something foreign and new, "It only just happened. Let people heal, you'll find your back. All of you."

 

Peter turned his face to nuzzle the hand that was cupping his cheek, "Why are you here, MJ?"

 

"Because even heroes need someone to save them, especially the dumb ones like you, Parker."

 

A laugh ripped from his throat, probably the first one since the war, he thought offhandedly. His eyes snapped to her in delight and her eyes betrayed the scowl coloring her mouth. Her eyes were bright and serious all at once. 

 

The laugh bubbled into a chuckle which ebbed away into silence. He could feel himself watching her and he could almost see her squirming in discomfort, like she knew something that he didn't about this moment and what it meant. 

 

Before his brain could catch up to his body, Peter was surging forward, his mouth pressing down into hers. MJ squeaked in surprise but leaned up on the cold metal of the bleachers to meet his kiss. His hands found her hair, unkempt and wild, and marveled at how soft it was in comparison to how hard she was as a person. No, that wasn't right, he thought, she was more than just hard. She was strong. 

 

Stronger than him. 

 

He caressed her lips into lazy, soft kisses that slowed into the occasional press of lips, until even that, too, stopped and they sat in the darkness, only the football field lights illuminating them, with their foreheads pressed against each others. 

 

"That's not," she whispered, "why I came out here, you dweeb."

 

"I've wanted to do that forever," he found himself saying and what surprised him was that it was true. Peter had wanted to kiss her for longer than he wanted to admit. He could see the moments so clearly now: a late-night at his house studying, a decathlon practice where she bumped his hip to get to the water fountain, an afternoon in the cafeteria when she snorted at Ned tripping into Betty Brant. All of those moments and more had the itch of something more. 

 

MJ brushed his curls out of his eyes, "I knew that, too."

 

His smile crinkled his eyes, "Is there anything you don't know?"

 

"Oh lots," her whole face sparkled in smiles, "I was hoping you could fill in some blanks about this Spiderling thing."

 

"Spider-man," he corrected.

 

"Agree to disagree," she quipped. 

 

He knocked his nose against hers seriously, "I'm not going to be okay for a while. I don't know if I'll ever be the same, honestly."

 

"That's okay," she mumbled, her nose skated up and down his like it comforted her, "Everybody's got a little baggage."

 

Peter soaked up the florescent lights from the field as he kissed her some more, promptly ending the conversation. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he remembered the pink sunlight from that day in Manhattan, the day that ended everything and started it all over. But it was this light, artificial and crass, that felt warmer. Like maybe his do-over had been delayed, like every day since that first day had been a plateau, a pause button on his restart. 

 

The world was different when the sun rose that day over downtown Manhattan. But Peter felt himself changing under these lights, the wound that had been gaping and fresh and open since that day started to stitch back together in the bleachers. Not perfectly, not even completely. 

 

But bit by bit. 

 

Day by day.

 

Hope came again.


End file.
